When we arrived in Canaan late Saturday night and got a quick debrief from Sister Gladius, which
really wasnt much of a debrief at all just a few quick things. She was leaving at 4am for the D.R.
to have some ministry training from the W.R. staff. We were told for the first week that we would
be working with the kids in the school and also lead tutoring sessions in the afternoon. Our days
consisted of us waking up at 6:30a.m. and being in the cafeteria around 7am for breakfast. Our
food for the first week was nothing different really from breakfast back in the States. School
started at 9am and their school is set-up as the Pace program, which is not a very effective
type of schooling. The kids in summer school are the ones that fell behind during the regular
school year and most of the all the kids lack comprehension of what they are reading. When we ask them questions they have trouble answering because no one is there to question them on a regular basis on what they are learning…just basically them filling in the blanks and such. Probably one of the hardest things for the kids is that they do all their work in English, so it makes it that much harder for themto comprehend what they are learning. There were four of us that worked in the school each day and we would just walk around the classroom just answering any questions that they had. School only went to noon then it was time for lunch, which again is much like lunch in the States just smaller portions. Tutoring began at 2 and went to 4 and it was pretty much the same set-up as the morning just not as many kids so we could work with them more one on one. We have been trying to do our best working with the kids, so they could better understand what they are doing.
Some afternoons after school Julian, Mari, Brek(another American here in Canaan), and myself would
play soccer with the kids. Our soccer games are not played on a regular field…we would play on
a cement basketball court, which of course is much smaller and had to be extra careful not to fall.
This was our daily schedule for the first week here in Canaan.
